


Waiting

by orphan_account



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-12
Updated: 2010-05-12
Packaged: 2019-06-14 12:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After Marineford, Luffy has no choice but to wait for his friends to rejoin him. [has since been Jossed by canon/is now AU]Zoro/Luffy if you put on your slash goggles.





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a birthday present for someone who likes Luffy/Zoro. Happy birthday, you know who you are. ;D

 

              This was the longest Luffy had stayed on one island since he'd first set out from his hometown in a barrel and it wasn't wearing well on him. If Luffy had been the type to keep of track of numbers (which he wasn't) he would know that he'd been on Mer-Island for almost two months now, which translated into 'way way waaaaaay to long and can we leave yet' in Luffy terms. Of course various very intelligent people had informed him multiple times and in various levels of detail and/or blunt-version-for-idiots that no, it would be a bad idea to leave and look for his absent crew, and yes, he just had to sit on his butt and wait until they each found their way to Rayleigh's location (and thus Luffy's) via Vivre card, and you moron you should be resting your near-dead ass anyway. Rayleigh was laying low on the Shabondy Archipelago ready to send any of the crew Luffy's way as soon as they hit the docks.

              That didn't make waiting any better.

              Of course Mer-Island was amazing with lots of crazy stuff and new people to meet, everything that Luffy had hoped for – and yet every time Luffy tracked down some new food item or weird trinket or funny-looking building he would start turning around and look for Nami or Brook or say “Hey Zoro –” and then realize belatedly that he was alone.

              Hachi, Keimi and her starfish kept Luffy company and in stock of as much takoyaki as he could eat (Luffy was almost driving them out of business at this rate, but they still wouldn't let him pay). Jinbei was around to hang out with, having come back to his home to prepare for defense now that Whitebeard's mantle of protection had been broken, but the Thousand Sunny was silent when Luffy got up in the morning and when he went to bed at night. Nobody was on board to cook for him, to fuss over his bandages, and nobody ever told him to stop stealing their food. Luffy ran around the boat singing every song that came into his head to try and fill up the silence, regaling Sunny of stories of the exploits of her brave predecessor in his best Usopp imitation. Sunny didn't reply with anything louder than the creak of wood and the rustling of sails, but Luffy knew the ship could hear.

              “Hey Sunny,” Luffy started one evening while perched on his favourite seat on the bow. “Where do you think everyone's ended up? Iva said they could be on any island on the Grand Line! I bet they're having all sorts of crazy adventures out there. I can't wait to hear about them when they get here!”

              When they got here. Because they'd get here. Luffy didn't allow any doubt in his mind (he  _couldn't_  allow any doubt in his mind) that they would all come eventually, they were all strong enough to weather anything the Grand Line could throw at them. He just had to wait, and keep waiting, and keep waiting, and they would surely all come back safe and sound and everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be, everyone on the ship together. He just had to wait.

              Luffy hated waiting.

              Brook was the first to arrive on the island with a greeting of “Yohohohoho!” That sent Luffy flying at him in a literally bone-crushing hug.

              “Mister Luffy!” Brook choked, as much as a skeleton could. “My, what big strong arms you have!”

              Luffy slackened his grip after hearing a rib crack. “Sorry.”

              Every night from that evening Brook played for Luffy, showcasing his wide array of talents on every instrument he could get his bony hands on, including trying out a Merman Island-style conch horn that Brook belatedly found still had a creature living in it. Luffy's laughs were louder than usual, maybe too loud, when the crab-shaped goat-looking thing (or was it a goat-shaped crab-looking thing?) scrabbled out of it's shell and decided it preferred Brook's empty eye socket instead, resulting in Brook breaking into a dancing giggle fit trying to pry it out while it ran around inside his head.

              Luffy was a completely uncritical audience even when the notes banged hollow against the inside of an empty ship, completely tone-deaf to any errors Brook might make. Luffy would never complain on hearing the same song twice or three or five times in a row, and when Brook was tired he would always cheer for more. Luffy wanted a slow, quiet song to fall asleep to and a brisk trumpet to wake up to in the morning (“Let's have a trumpet every morning from now on!!”) . Luffy demanded to hear all of Brook's adventures in song and verse, which miraculously Brook managed to pull off with a minimum of awkward scrabbling for rhyme while plunking away on the ship's piano that Luffy had had brought in right when Sunny had been built in anticipation of getting a musician on board (“What's a pirate ship without a pirate piano?!”).

              It felt like he had been waiting forever and then another forever and three weeks, but eventually the rest of the crew trickled in. Franky came back with a massive backpack full of gizmos and gadgets that did something that Franky explained in detail while saying the word 'super!' about twice as much as usual. Luffy didn't understand a thing he was talking about but soaked up every word, asking what this did or what that did and poking at Franky's arms and legs trying to figure out how to set off the new mods (most of which Franky wouldn't reveal because it would 'ruin the surprise').

              Robin and Chopper showed up in the same boat, Robin greeting Luffy with a smile of a relief and Chopper spazzing out almost immediately after sizing up Luffy's now mostly-healed injuries, ordering a full examination whether Luffy considered himself 'fine' or not. Luffy gave Chopper vague non-answers and laughs when questioned what the hell he had done to his body and you should be dead by now and it's a medical miracle that you're not and what the hell happened?!

              Luffy pestered his friends for every detail of their adventures and when they were done he asked for it again. Sanji came back after that and Luffy's stomach realized to the fullest extent how much it had missed Sanji's cooking. Luffy prodded Sanji for details of his adventures but was met with only stony glares and statements that Sanji was 'Not. Going. To talk about it. Ever. Because nothing happened. At all.' and Luffy left it off at that (though he did spot some of that red lip-stuff Nami sometimes used stuffed in a corner of the storehouse under some dried beans. A souvenir?)

              Every time one of his companions returned to the ship Luffy felt a clamp release from his gut and they'd have another party, each one successively wilder and louder than the last. Usopp made a dramatic entrance on his return, perched in the highest point of the Thousand Sunny and posing with a minimum amount of knee-wobbling. He'd probably practiced a thousand cool lines beforehand to maximize the effect (“No fear! Sogeking has returned!”) but only managed to last about twenty seconds until he was crying like a baby and hugging Luffy in a desperate near-stranglehold.

              When Nami returned with a sack of treasure she'd nabbed from some suckers along the way she was apparently in a good mood, as she shelled out significantly more than usual for Luffy's choice of whatever he felt like eating and they threw the craziest party since Brook had first returned, going all night and past the first light of dawn.

              Another eternity passed, and Zoro had still not come back.

              “You know Zoro,” Nami said reassuringly. “He can't find his way out of the bathroom without a map. He's probably completely lost; I wouldn't be surprised if it took him years to get here.”

              “Years?! I can't wait years!” Luffy whined. “Come on, Nami, let's go look for Zoro.”

              Nami sighed. They'd had this conversation multiple times before. “I've told you, there's absolutely no way to reverse-track a Vivre card. We've already got a network keeping their eye out for him, not to mention the fact that he's a wanted man and pirates and Marines the world over know his face. We'll  _hear_  if there's news from him. Sailing out to look for him is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and giving him a moving target would make it impossible for that dolt to find us. We just have to wait. It's only a matter of time.”

              “I don't wanna. I'm sick of waiting.” Luffy had the same sullen look on his face he had when Sanji denied him meat from the stores, but Nami could see something else lying under that, a tense feeling that had been riding under every grin, every playful remark, every laugh that had come out of Luffy's mouth since Nami had reunited with him. Normally she would have bonked him over the head. This time, she could only apologize.

              “Sorry, Luffy, but this is really the fastest way.”

              Time passed. Days were long with nothing to fill them, especially for a crew so used to days of constant mayhem, and soon everyone else was feeling the tension on board. The novelty of Mer-Island started to wear off even for Sanji (though he claimed he could never get enough of darling mermaid beauties~), and everyone reverted to their default time-killing-on-the-sea activities. Usopp fiddled with his gadgets. Franky went over every inch of Sunny's wood twice over. Nami and Robin enjoyed the sun and Sanji's sundaes. If Luffy pretended that Zoro was sitting against the railing just behind him, fast asleep, then everything was back to normal.

              But it wasn't normal. There was a big, jagged gap in the crew and everyone could feel it but nobody said anything.

              “...you think he's okay?” The voice in the kitchen sounded like Chopper. Luffy was heading to the kitchen to grab a snack when he heard murmurs coming from behind the door. Usually he would burst in and interrupt whatever conversation he pleased, but this time something like instinct or a hunch made him pause outside the door.

              “He's gotta be.” A lower-pitched voice: Sanji. “That bastard's indestructible.” Despite his confident words, here was a rare note of worry for the old Marimo in his voice.

              “But there hasn't been any news of him at all! And with his wounds... the injuries from Kizaru on top of the old ones from the damage he absorbed from Luffy – he shouldn't have been able to move! What if he ended up in someplace dangerous, and –”

              “Shh!” Sanji hissed. “We're not talking about that, remember? Luffy'd flip if he heard you! Zoro's just being his usual stupid self – he'll be back here once he can figure out how to travel in a straight line.”

              It took a while, the rusty cogs in Luffy's brain working until they fell into place. Luffy wasn't completely stupid – he'd noticed after waking up from his fight with Moria that he was more chipper than usual. He'd noticed Zoro's injuries after that, but he hadn't pressed, feeling that Zoro would say whatever he wanted to say on his own time. And maybe there was a bit of denial in there as well – there were things Luffy didn't even want to consider, things that he wanted to push out of his mind because if he lingered, if he stayed in one spot too long ( _like now_ ) his mind would come back and hammer on the same point again and again and he wouldn't be able to move forward anymore, and he  _had_  to move forward, now more than ever.

              Luffy couldn't keep track of the days he filled after that falling into a blur of activity. As the days stretched on too long Luffy stopped thinking about them and fell into a frantic kind of rhythm.

              Almost a year later, Luffy had no idea what the situation was with the World Government, the Yonkou, Blackbeard, the World Nobles, the revolutionaries, or anyone else. None of it mattered. They just had to wait.

              A year to the day with almost auspicious timing, Zoro appeared early in the morning and promptly fell asleep on Sunny's deck with his back to the railing like he hadn't been missing for a year. He was woken up in a rather violent manner by a hard rubber punch to the face that he really should have seen coming, sending him flying halfway down the deck towards the bow. “What th-” Zoro rolled to his feet and drew his swords on instinct, but it wasn't an enemy attack.

              “You took way too long!!” Luffy's fists were clenched and it looked like he was willing to throw another twenty punches at least. His body was tense, but something inside him that had been coiling up ever since Kuma had separated the party had sprung loose and his head was flooded with it. Zoro was here; everyone was  _here_.

              Zoro looked a bit stunned at first, but after a moment he sheathed his swords and relaxed his posture, rubbing his cheek where a beautiful bruise would no doubt shortly blossom thanks to Luffy's fist. “Yeah. Sorry.” As soon as the words were out of Zoro's mouth Luffy rushed forward and landed a punch on the other side of Zoro's face, and Zoro didn't try to dodge it, absorbing the blow and only stumbling back a couple of steps before regaining his stance.

              “Where the hell were you?!”

              “I got a little lost. Sorry.” Another punch, this time to the gut. It knocked half the wind out of him, but he managed to stay on his feet. Luffy was holding back.

              “Stop saying you're sorry!” Luffy punched him again in the stomach, this time with the other fist He was looking down flat at the deck of the ship. Zoro took the blow better this time, his feet iron on the ground.

              “...Why?” Zoro was genuinely puzzled, but it started to become clear when Luffy raised his gaze to meet Zoro's, no less fierce for all the tears that were pouring down his face.

              “Because it's my fault!” Luffy yelled at Zoro at point-blank. “Because you took my injuries in Thriller Bark, and you kept fighting anyway! Because you got thrown to some island in the middle of nowhere half dead because I couldn't stop it! Because you could have died alone somewhere because of me!” Luffy's voice hit a crack. “Because you had to protect me, because I'm  _too weak_!”

              Zoro's entire body froze when Luffy said 'Thriller Bark'. How the hell Luffy had learned about that Zoro didn't know (and he was going to fucking kill whoever was responsible), but Zoro wasn't going to let Luffy hammer himself for that. “Luffy, that's –”

              But Luffy wasn't in the mood to listen, and Zoro, expecting another punch, was shocked to find Luffy's arms wrapped around his chest in an almost painfully tight hug. “I don't want you to get hurt for me. I don't want you to die for me. I don't want anyone to die for me. I can't – I can't take that again, Zoro. Promise me you won't ever die for me.  _Please!_ ”

              It was the pleading that got to Zoro, gave him a sick feeling in his stomach; this wasn't the way Luffy normally was –  _ever_  was. “Luffy –” he tried to pry Luffy off, get a look at his face, but Luffy was clinging on to him with all the suction in his rubbery body, trembling slightly. Zoro let Luffy cling for a while before making a second attempt at peeling Luffy off, this time with more success. His mouth was dry as he spoke. “Luffy, what happened?”

              Luffy pulled himself together a bit to speak again. “Ace is dead.” Then he started crying again, his face already blotchy red and his nose running like a little kid's. Zoro knew he was missing large gaps in the story such as 'how', 'why', and 'what the shit happened while I was gone' but right then it didn't matter, he just hugged Luffy again until Luffy's sobs stopped before he released his captain again and spoke.

              “I don't know all about what happened with Ace,” Zoro began. “And I never meant for you to know about what happened in Thriller Bark. But Luffy. I don't regret it.”

              Luffy's expression quickly flared into one of unveiled anger, but he didn't punch Zoro again, which was probably a good sign.

              “...and I'd do it again.”

              Then Luffy punched him again, square in the gut, and Zoro had thought he was ready for it, but this time the punch was harder, hard enough to knock Zoro off his feet. Sometimes – not very often – Zoro forgot just how crazy strong Luffy was.

              Zoro took a couple of gasps of air, sitting on the deck as he got his wind back, before continuing. “You're the captain of this ship; everyone on this boat needs you. It's my job to make sure you  _stay_  the captain of this ship. I'd give my life for you any day.” He was still short of breath, but his voice was as even as he could make it. And he meant every word.

              This time Luffy dropped to his knees and punched the deck instead of Zoro; an improvement of sorts. “I don't  _want_  you to! I don't  _want_  your life on my head! I don't  _want_  that kind of weight! I  _don't want you to die!_ ”

              Zoro's reply was a flat challenge. “Then get strong enough to stop me.”

              Luffy gritted his teeth and punched three new holes in the deck, but he didn't reply in words. He knew there was too much truth there to argue, no matter how much he doubted himself on it. He had to rise to the challenge; there was no turning back ( _there had never been_ ).

              After a moment's pause, Zoro gave a half-grin. “But hey, trust me, I don't wanna die or anything. I plan to always get back to this ship alive, no matter what hell I've gotta crawl out of.”

              Luffy chuckled weakly and flopped onto the deck, clearly not into punching anymore holes in either Zoro or the deck. “Yeah. Me too.”

              Zoro lay back on the deck and promptly fell into another nap; one which wouldn't last long before the rest of the crew came up on deck and attacked their final returnee with glee. There was enough time for one last party, the first  _real_ one in a long time, before the Straw Hat crew sailed out the next morning to seek what awaited them.


End file.
